# Iced Earth's Jon Schaffer wanted by FBI



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


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## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


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## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


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## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


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## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


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## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


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## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


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## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


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## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


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## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


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## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


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## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


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## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


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## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


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## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


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## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


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## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill.  I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill.  I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill.  I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


----------



## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


----------



## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


----------



## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


----------



## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

*MOD EDIT: This thread is heavily monitored and heavily moderated.

Discourse is allowed and even encouraged but trolling will not be tolerated. No insults, no name calling and no carrying arguments into the other subforums. Debate begins and ends here or the PM box.

Report any abusive posts immediately.*

I'm an Australian and I fully admit whats going on in the US right now with your preselection process confuses the hell out of me . we don't do it here

our media here is reporting how well Trump is doing and it seems by their reports that he is going to win selection to run for president .

the whole world really is watching this in fascination , it started as some weird bystory or tag line in the news but it's incomprehensible that he is actually winning .

Maybe he has some good polices. all we really hear about on our media is building a wall on the southern border with Mexico and nuking north Korea and ISIL/ISIS

so you guys actually living in the USA do you think he will be running for president ? and how do you actually feel about it the possibility of Trump being your president ?

I'm genuinely curious


----------



## SpaceDock (Mar 2, 2016)

Looks like he will win the Republican nomination. He has no policies, he is just firing up a bunch of idiots to get them to vote for him. If he wins the presidency, I'm leaving the usa.


----------



## pwsusi (Mar 2, 2016)

The political establishment (both sides), the media, wealthy donors and special interests created Trump. Trump is a reflection of the anger by a significant number Americans across many different demographics (not just a few idiots). There are people that are going to be hard left and hard right and always tow the party line, but every two or three election cycles we tend to see a shift in power because the swing voters in the middle get fed up with the party in power and vote the other side in for a change. In reality though nothing changes and there is frustration that has built up. I think there is also a feeling that we are no longer governed by the people but instead by a ruling class that is bought and paid for and there is a desire to send a message and disrupt the status quo. I think Bernie Sanders has done well this election cycle for similar reasons. I suspect while there are many that genuinely support him, i also suspect there are many that are just voting anti-establishment to send a message (i.e. like the idea of Trump more than they like Trump himself). The fact that he has had personal success in his life and is direct in the way he talks is probably enough for people to just give the guy a shot....ie think he'll be a successful leader/surround himself with the right people to take the country in a different direction even though he hasn't really provided much substance (actually have any of the candidates?). While not providing a lot of solutions he has been successful in articulating problems, or at least some of the things that people are angry about. He has successfully connected with people and emotion always wins over logic. Just like in 2008 people are voting their heart and not necessarily their minds. I'm not saying anything good or bad about Obama, but on paper one could argue strongly for McCain. The fact is people were so sick of the previous administration's policies though no republican on earth stood a chance. Obama was the right guy at the right time...kind of like Trump. 

While the president is very important obviously, we do have 3 branches of govt and balance of powers. so i suspect even if he gets in there will be much of the same. Even more so because at least with a Dem or Repub you tend to get support from your party....but Trump will get support from neither...they both dispise him lol. Anyway if he gets in, and i believe he will, it will at the very least be entertaining


----------



## SmashinWithTone (Mar 2, 2016)

I personally feel that trump is a grade A idiot. Its amazing that if you have the money in this country you can possibly be elected president, just like you can get away with murdering your ex wife and her lover. God i love this country.


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

Trump is the figurehead of what I can only describe as a neo-fascist movement in America. This was brought about by our own liberal elites (namely, the Clintons) selling out the blue collar working class with bad trade deals and deregulation. NAFTA sent away millions of manufacturing jobs without accounting for helping the displaced workers, and financial deregulation allowed the sub-prime bubble to go unchecked which further destroyed the wealth of blue collar america when the bubble finally burst in 2008. Trump supporters are rightfully pissed off and fed up with the system, but they're not informed enough to really understand what's going on. Trump is acting like a protective father figure to them. He will protect us from the scary Muslims who want to hurt your family, he will protect us from the gays who want to corrupt the youth, he will stand up to our enemies and show them how great and powerful America is. He is the kind of figure that is often embraced by disenfranchised citizens of a dying empire. Of course if these people understood the history of postwar American foreign policy they would understand that militarism is partly what got us into this mess, and it is certainly not the path to a way out of it. 

Chris Hedges just wrote a really great piece on the rise of Trump, its lengthy but well worth the read. 



> "The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power."



Chris Hedges: The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism - Chris Hedges - Truthdig


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Uh, what?

Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?

This is far, far more racial politics than anything else.

And yes, he's going to win the Republican nomination. Why would voters pick xenophobia-lite and dog whistles when they can have the full, unapologetic bullhorn?


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> Have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric the right has been using since the Southern Strategy with Nixon?
> 
> ...



Racism is a symptom of the underlying socioeconomic currents. I don't think its the core cause of his popularity. I made the same argument when discussing radical Islam in the middle east. Racidal Islam is what people embraced when faced with dire circumstances. Much like how so many blue collar Americans embrace radical Christian evangalism with an anti-government undercurrent in the face of increasing socioeconomic hardship. Of course much of it can be traced back to good ol' Ron Raygun. But the Clintons also shoulder a good amount of the blame for being complicit in the rise of crony capitalism.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

The terms of NAFTA were negotiated by the first President Bush; after he took office, Clinton negotiated side agreements to protect American workers and strengthen the environmental regulations in the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement


----------



## will_shred (Mar 2, 2016)

I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

will_shred said:


> I don't think the agreement ever should have been signed in the first place, but that's just me.



Hindsight is 20/20.

Which is not to be snark: as it was understood then, it wasn't transparently pretty terrible.


----------



## celticelk (Mar 2, 2016)

As far as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (which repealed Glass-Steagall) goes, the final version of the bill passed both houses of Congress with massive majorities. You could certainly argue that Clinton should have executed a protest veto anyway, but at that point the legislation was happening whether he agreed or not.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

Some valid points on both sides here. Personally, I see Trump as a blowhard and little more than an ape demonstrating full blown chest out puffery. I wasn't a fan before, I'm certainly not a fan now. 

The two party system is the true enemy here. I think that's something people are really lashing out at. Democrats and Republicans are simply two opposing sides of the same corrupt coin. At this point, Washington need to be cleaned out entirely. A full blown political enema is in order. Sanders, Clinton, Trump....all the same. Trump may not be a career politician, like Sanders and Clinton, but he's certainly not a better option. 

I just get annoyed with all the hate on Trump when no one seems to be recognizing that Sanders and Clinton's tongues are every bit as forked as Trumps. Just different lies. 

I'm voting Libertarian this year...and if I don't like who THEY put up, then I'm staying home. I'm tired of all these years of "lesser of two evils" voting.


----------



## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.


----------



## awake69 (Mar 2, 2016)

asher said:


> ...I think it has to do with the fact that the things Clinton and Sanders are saying _are not explicitly or implicitly hateful bigotry which incites supporters into real acts of violence_ and are not proposing objectively terrible and harmful policy.



No. They simply pander and say what their constituents want to hear. As long as Trump has been in the spotlight (over thirty years now) when has he not been combative, controversial, and brash in his spoken opinions? At least he's honest about it. Sanders and Clinton are almost worse in that they often speak out of two sides of their mouths. The operative word being "almost". 

I get what you're saying, but I still think they all suck.


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## Captain Butterscotch (Mar 2, 2016)

Yes, he'll be nominated and it's mildly terrifying because the only person predicted to soundly beat him in the current polls floating around is Bernie Sanders, and he's a _very_ long shot away from the nomination. 

Kasich and Paul were the only people on the Republican side who seemed like they were actually living in the same reality as the rest of us, no matter how I disagreed with how they think things should be run. Now the Republicans choices are: the token black guy with a narcolepsy problem, an establishment golden child, a theocratic psycho, and Donald Drumpf.


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## asher (Mar 2, 2016)

Head to head polls this far out are barely above "completely useless".


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## mongey (Mar 2, 2016)

I think the rest of the world have been looking on with a " he can't possibly become president "view but it seems it is possible 

Right or wrong who the president of the USA is has an impact on the rest of the world . even though I don't live there i'm sacred he's going to get in cause i don't know what it means for the rest of the world. Every country has moronic politicians with moronic ideas, we just got rid of onewho became prime minister here , but Trump is just so off the scale


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## QuantumCybin (Mar 2, 2016)

Oh yeah, Trump is definitely going to win the republican nomination and it's quite possible he'll win the whole damn thing. Just like in 2012 though, I'm voting libertarian and going with Gary Johnson. I just want him to get that 5% vote he needs to give a third party the attention it rightfully deserves from the federal government...bipartisanship clearly isn't working.


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## Hollowway (Mar 3, 2016)

Oddly, I like Trump and Sanders over any of the other candidates. Or perhaps not oddly. I'm definitely antiestablishment at this point. Clinton is practically frothing at the mouth she wants the power and prestige of the presidency so much. She'll say and do anything to get there, and I like her far, far less than Bill. I think Trump the person is much more reasonable and centrist than Trump the candidate. I think we'd be better off with him leading than Cruz or Rubio because he deposit have any particular loyalty to the party. But, who knows. I do hope he gets the nomination so that the Republicans address all the crap that got him there, and try to come up with some sort of decent candidates in the future. And I think the Democrats need to look at all these banks giving Clinton money, and address the fact that she is moving much closer to the right than the rest of the party.


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## Aymara (Mar 3, 2016)

I think it's time for the first female president. Not that I think that Clinton is the right candidate, but as it seems, she is the only one, that has a chance against this idiot named Trump.

Most people here in Germany think, that this guy is too weird to have a chance ... I hope, that's right.

I myself have the impression that the US can choose between the Devil and Belzebub, as we say in Germany.

Incompetence rules the world


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